Events

02/15/2017

6:30 pm

Sociology Lounge, Room 6112

February 15, 2017
6:30
Sociology Lounge, Room 6112

America of recent decades is a land of contradictions: Soaring wealth and a poverty level above that of 1973; productivity up but wages for most Americans stagnant; the apotheosis of individual freedom and the paralysis of democracy; the election of a black president and the incarceration of a million black men; a growing acceptance of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity and the triumph of a racially, ethnically, and sexually incendiary campaign for president; the increase in educational attainment and the growing mismatch between student skills and the needs of the job market; the cost of medical care skyrocketing and a decline in indicators of Americans’ health compared to other affluent countries; long periods of prosperity and soaring rates of depression, anxiety, and self-reported loneliness; a stagnating economy for most Americans and rage directed at those who would use government to provide relief.

Third Wave Capitalism seeks to understand these contradictions. It argues that the 1970s mark a turning point in American history. Just as the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century gave way to the corporate capitalism of the first part of the twentieth century, so the latter gave way to a third phase. “Third Wave Capitalism” is distinguished by the emergence of giant multinational corporations and large “non-profit” organizations; by novel technologies such as computers, the Internet, and biotech; and by globalization of production and of the market. At a deeper level, it is characterized by a rise in “rent-seeking” – the use of power to grab a larger share of the aggregate social wealth (as opposed to making money by providing something more or different that before); by a blurring of the lines between public and private sectors; by the decline of unions and other countervailing forces, and by the rise of virulent individualism and uncontested free market ideologies at the expense of any collective will to solve societal problems.

The book pursues this theme with detailed studies of the health care system, the school reform movement, the persistence of racial disparities and of poverty and the rise of the criminal justice system as a system of social control, the growing pressures on professionals such as writers and teachers, and the apparent rise in levels of emotional distress (expressed both as depression and anxiety and as political rage). It concludes with speculations as to the obstacles and preconditions for progressive social change.

Speakers

John Ehrenreich is Professor of Psychology (formerly Professor of American Studies) at the State University of New York – Old Westbury. He is best known for his work on health care politics, including The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics (1971, co-authored with his then-wife, Barbara Ehrenreich), and The Cultural Crisis of Modern Medicine (1976); his work with Barbara Ehrenreich on the “professional managerial class;” and his study of the history of American social policy, The Altruistic Imagination (1985). He is a 2016-2017 Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. His most recent book, Third Wave Capitalism: How Money, Power, and the Pursuit of Self Interest have Imperiled the American Dream, was published by Cornell University Press in 2016.

Mimi Abramovitz is Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. She has written extensively about the issues of women, work, poverty, social welfare policy, and the history of activism among low income women. Her books include the award-winning Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the U.S. (2000); Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy From Colonial Times to the Present, (1999); and, with Joel Blau, The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy ( 2010). Dr. Abramovitz has been inducted into the Columbia University School of Social Work Hall of Fame and received the 2013 Humanitarian and Leadership Award from the Association for International Conferences.

David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books, articles, and lectures. His books include Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (2014) and The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (2010), A Companion to Marx’s Capital (2010), and A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (2005). Professor Harvey was director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics from 2008-2014, and is currently Research Director at the Center.

Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York (CUNY). Piven is known equally for her contributions to social theory and for her social activism. A veteran of the war on poverty and subsequent welfare-rights protests both in New York City and on the national stage, she has been instrumental in formulating the theoretical underpinnings of those movements. Among her many books are the best selling Poor People’s Movements (1977), and Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (1972), both coauthored with Richard CA. Cloward, and Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2008). Professor Piven was president of the American Sociological Association in 2007.

Peter Hitchcock is Professor of English at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of five books, including The Long Space: Transnationalism and Post Colonial Form (2009). He is Associate Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, CUNY. It is free and open to the public.

12/06/2016

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Sociology Lounge, Room 6112

12/6: Book Event: The Civil War in the United States; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

December 6, 2016
6 -8 pm
Sociology Lounge, Room 6112

Andrew Zimmerman will discuss his new edition of the writings of Marx and Engels on the American Civil War, emphasizing the importance of these writings for thinking about race, class, and revolution today. The American Civil War so profoundly shaped Marx and Engels’s understanding of social revolution and international politics that it marks a watershed in the history of communism as much as it does in the history of the United States. A complete revision of the 1937 edition of the Civil War writings of Marx and Engels, the book incorporates new texts by Marx and Engels, as well as by US authors, including Communist Union Army officer Joseph Weydemeyer and African American scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. The first edition of the book itself is also a landmark in the history of anti-communist repression in the United States: its editor, Herbert Morais (publishing under the pseudonym Richard Enmale), was fired from Brooklyn College in part for producing that edition.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, CUNY. It is free and open to the public.

12/01/2016

7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Elebash Recital Hall

The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, the Advanced Research Collaborative and the Center for the Humanities present:

What now? The roots of the present economic crisis and the way forward: a discussion with David Harvey and Robert Brenner

Elebash Recital HallThursday December 17.00 pm – 9.00 pm

livestreamed here: http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu/videos/

Whirlwind, by Marina Ahun

Robert Brenner is Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at the New School University and author of many books and papers on the early development of capitalism and the current economic crisis. The Brenner Debate on the origins of capitalism to this day remains seminal on this topic. More recently his work –The Boom and the Bubble: the US in the World Economy (London, Verso, 2002) and Economics of Global Turbulence(London, Verso, 2006)–has focused on the fundamental contradictions of contemporary capitalism. His most recent book is The Political Economy of the Rank and File Rebellion in Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below during the Long 1970s eds. A. Brenner et. al. (London, Verso, 2010)

David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books, articles, and lectures. He is the author of Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism(Profile Books, 2014), one of The Guardian’s(http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/02/books-christmas-presents-economics-reviews“) Best Books of 2011, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2010). Other books include A Companion to Marx’s Capital, Limits to Capital, and Social Justice and the City. Professor Harvey has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital for nearly 40 years. His lectures on Marx’s Volumes I and II are available for download (free) on his website. He was director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics from 2008-2014.

This event is sponsored by the Advanced Research Collaborative, Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and Center for the Humanities, Graduate Center, CUNY. It is free and open to the public.

11/30/2016

6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Sociology Lounge, Room 6112

November 30, 2016
6:30 -8:30 pm
Sociology Lounge – 6112

The white supremacist movement and self-described Alt-Right used the Trump presidential campaign to amplify its message and swell its ranks. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and militia leaders are celebrating the Trump presidential win as a victory of their own. A panel of experts on right-wing media and movements will discuss what we can expect of the hard right after the stunning Trump victory and how to challenge it.

Crimes against immigrants and Muslims spiked and online harassment of Jewish commentators and journalists was widespread in the midst of the racist rhetoric of the campaign. A September 2016 study by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism found that white nationalist use of social media now far exceeds the online presence of the Islamic State on virtually every social metric. Join us for this important conversation.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, the Advanced Research Collaborative, and the Center for Humanities at Graduate Center, CUNY. It is free and open to the public. Space is limited to 80, and guests will be admitted according to a first come, first serve policy.

11/17/2016

6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Skylight Conference Room, 9th Floor

11/17: The Tale of Tadmetla: Extracts from The Burning Forest

November 17, 2016
6:30-8:30 pm
Skylight Room

Nandini Sundar will draw on The Burning Forest to comment on a recent spate of attacks on Adivasi villages by vigilante forces in Bastar. In her new book The Burning Forest: India’s War in Bastar (Juggernaut, 2016), Sundar chronicles how the armed conflict between the government and the Maoists in central India has devastated the lives of some of India’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens. The Burning Forest details how the Salwa Judum – a government sponsored vigilante movement – killed hundreds of adivasis and drove thousands of villagers into camps. The book unravels the links between counterinsurgency and extractive capitalism in what is today one of India’s most militarized regions.

Speaker: Nandini Sundar, Delhi University

Nandini Sundar is professor of sociology at Delhi University. Her research spans adivasi history and politics, civil wars and counterinsurgency, law and struggles over natural resources, and the intellectual history of anthropology and sociology in India. She is the author of Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar (Oxford University Press, 1997) and has edited and co-edited a number of books, including The Scheduled Tribes and their India (OUP, 2016) and Civil Wars in South Asia: State, Sovereignty, Development (with Aparna Sundar, Sage, 2014). The winner of the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences in 2010 and the Ester Boserup Prize for Development Research 2016, Sundar is actively engaged in public debate in India. Her public writings are available at nandinisundar.blogspot.in

Discussant: Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, CUNY. It is free and open to the public.

11/16/2016

6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre

Co-producers and directors Marisa Holmes and Bruno Giuliani will be present for a discussion following the screening.

In France a crisis of liberal democracy has been happening, revealing the violence of the state underneath. In February this year, under the context of a renewed state of emergency, the Socialist Party in power proposed a labor law reform that stripped workers of rights long taken for granted. In response, after a month of protests in the street, a wave of action led by the youth and the workers converged at Place de la République in Paris in an experiment in direct democracy. Où est la démocratie? (Where is democracy?) captures this moment of upheaval that aimed to “overthrow the labor bill and the world it represents”.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, CUNY. It is free and open to the public.

11/09/2016

6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Room 6112

11/9: Words and Things: Raymond Williams, Late Capitalism, and Keywords for Radicals

November 9, 2016

6:30 – 8:30 pm

Sociology Lounge, Room 6112

The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, in Conversation with AK Thompson

In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), pioneering cultural materialist Raymond Williams devised a method for revealing how language not only described but also helped to produce the world. By focusing on historical shifts in word usage and meaning and tracing the constellated vocabularies that gave each moment an appearance of stability, Williams revealed how our most intimate utterances could serve as guides to the contradictions at work within the social totality.

Forty years later, Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle was published with the aim of applying Williams’ method to the contests over word usage and meaning that have become so central to contemporary activist projects. In addition to its more particular focus on the radical milieu, however, Keywords for Radicals also had to contend with late capitalism’s shifting epistemology. How does one submit language to historical scrutiny, for instance, when history itself has become a conceptually indeterminate proposition?

In this public dialogue, Keywords for Radicals co-editor AK Thompson will review Williams’ method in light of the new terrain to highlight its enduring relevance while demonstrating how it might be modified to address the epistemological challenges posed by the cultural logic of late capitalism.

AK Thompson got kicked out of high school for publishing an underground newspaper called The Agitator and has been an activist, writer, and social theorist ever since. Currently teaching social theory at Fordham University, his publications include Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent (2010) and Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements/Social Research (2006). Between 2005 and 2012, he served on the Editorial Committee of Upping The Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, CUNY. It is free and open to the public.

11/01/2016

6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Room 6112

*this space seats 60 people. Guests will be allowed entry on a first come, first served basis.

Introduced by Gregory Baggett, presentations by authors Peter Marcuse and David Madden, comments by David Harvey and Hilary Botein. Moderated by Sam Stein.

Housing is one of the most pressing issues of our time. In their new book In Defense of Housing, Peter Marcuse and David Madden investigate the nature of the contemporary housing crisis and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing problem has deep political, social, and economic roots. It will not be solved by minor policy shifts; a more radical approach is needed. This event will use the book as a starting point for a discussion about the causes of the housing crisis and critical responses to it.

Speakers:

Gregory Baggett founded the New York Council for Housing Development Fund Companies (NYC HDFC) and is a housing consultant, specializing in limited equity cooperatives and low-income housing. He received his doctoral training in history at Columbia University and teaches at colleges in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Presently, he is completing a book entitled Heuristic Experiments in Low-Income Housing: The Housing Development Fund Company, 1966-2013. While conducting research for his book, he created the most extensive database relating HDFC cooperative and rental properties in New York City. His organization’s webpage is www.nychdfc.org[nychdfc.org].

Hilary Botein is Associate Professor at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Her research explores the factors that influence urban development, with special attention to the social politics of policies and programs underlying affordable housing and community development. She also is interested in how housing programs can meet the needs of vulnerable populations – and in how they fail. Prior to her academic career, she worked for eighteen years as an attorney and policy analyst on affordable housing and economic justice issues, primarily in New York City.

David Harvey teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is the author of many books, including Social Justice and the City, The Condition of Postmodernity, The Limits to Capital, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Spaces of Global Capitalism, and A Companion to Marx’s Capital. His website is davidharvey.org[davidharvey.org]

Samuel Stein is a PhD student in geography at the CUNY graduate center. His work has been published in Metropolitics, Jacobin Magazine, New Politics and many other journals and magazines, and his research on Chinatown was included in the book Zoned Out! Race, Displacement and City Planning in New York City (Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse, eds.).

David Madden is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. He has published academic articles in some of the leading urban studies journals, and is Editor at the journal CITY. He has also published reviews and commentary in outlets including the LSE Review of Books, Washington Post and the Guardian.

Peter Marcuse is Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He has written extensively in English as well as German, in the US, the UK and various other European countries. His work has also appeared in newspaper and magazines such as the Nation, New York Newsday, Monthly Review, Shelterforce and many others.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Graduate Center, CUNY, the New York Council for Housing Development Fund Companies (NYC HDFC), and Verso . It is free and open to the public.

To watch the livestream of Friday’s segment, go to videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu and click on the link in the “Live Videos” box on the upper right hand side of the page. Click on this event.

Saturday, October 29, 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM

Mayday Community Space

176 St. Nicholas Avenue Brooklyn, New York

This Third Annual Philosophy and Religion in Africana Traditions (PRAT) conference will explore the struggle for liberation of African descendant peoples as demonstrated through the instrumentalities of the philosophical and religious imaginations. Participants will discuss visions, visionaries, and the quest for personal, social, national and political transformation as demonstrated in the fight for emancipation, the Promises and Prospects of Reconstruction and the quest for Reparations. Topics under consideration include Race, Religion and Economics in 19th – 20th century discourse, Reconstruction and Economic Redistribution then and now, Reparations and National Identity, Black Lives Matter and the prospects of 21st Century Political and Cultural Revolutions.